Labels for Education from Mirror Earth

Well, I gave 'em fair notice. I gave 'em a chance. It's been two weeks, and it hasn't been fixed. So it's time to point it out to the rest of the world.

Two weeks ago I spotted this Labels for Education flyer in the Sunday papers. If you're unfamiliar with the concept, it involves convincing people to buy specific brands of products and then saving selected portions of the packaging. Collect enough of these tokens (the program used to be called "Box Tops for Education," unless that's a competing program) and maybe the corporations in charge will see fit to present your underfunded school with some supplies. Does any other educational system in any other developed nation in the world have anything like this going on?

Anyway, I saw this and my eye was immediately drawn to a part of it. See, I love globes. Always have. I've always been fascinated by the shape of the world, and specifically by the three-dimensional representation of it. Maps are fine, but to really understand how the planet is laid out, you need a globe.  I wondered what part of the world the folks in their Marketing department chose to use in their art. So I took a close look at it...

...and noticed...

...well...

OK. I need to step back for a second here. I learned when I first floated this on Facebook that not everyone is as well-versed on basic geography as I would like. Which is a problem.

She tried to warn us.

If you don't get it immediately, I'll explain. That's the West coast of North and South America on the left, with the Pacific Ocean on the right. But it's flipped left-right. This is a mirror-image of the globe. This is not how the Earth is shaped!

Now, why would someone do that? After working for years in the DVD industry, I can hazard a guess: Someone in the Marketing department looked at a photo of the globe that was to be used on the Labels for Education promotional art and said "That would look better if that black thing were on the right instead of the left." So someone in the Graphic Arts department, someone whose job it is to do whatever Marketing tells them to do, obligingly flipped the image. And someone in Marketing saw it, wrote "APPROVED" and their initials on the proofs, and sent them to their manager, who rubber-stamped the project and sent it off to be distributed.

And so the mistake was made, and the art was sent out with the image of the globe reversed. Not just in one configuration or location, but over...

...and over...

From the Labels for Education Facebook page

...and over...

Later on the Facebook page

...and over...

From the Labels in Education official website

So, what's the harm? On one level, probably nothing. In case you haven't noticed, spelling doesn't count anymore. Details are dismissed by folks at all level as being, well, "details." (Back in my DVD Compression/Encoding/Authoring days I had a manager several levels above me dismiss concerns voiced by my department in the DVD as being about "details." I pointed out to him that details were what our department was all about - nine billion bits of data, one bit at a time.) Who other than me would notice a backwards globe as a design element in some promotional artwork?

But on another level it is very telling about the dedication to education, to getting it right, embodied by the Labels for Education program. And it doesn't speak well for them.

Maybe next time, they should hire Miss Teen South Carolina 2007 as a consultant.

Upcoming blogging events

If you've been paying attention to the sidebar of this blog, you already know about these events. But here's a reminder anyway!

Blog Fest is coming this Friday, September 21! Gort, Joe Valenti, and Dave Yonki originally envisioned this as a political event, more about politics than blogging. After a dip in turnout for the Spring 2011 Blog Fest while Gort was taking a break from blogging, NEPA Blogs co-administrator Michelle Hryvnak Davies took the initiative to run a publicity drive for the Fall 2011 and Spring 2012 Blog Fests, bringing in large numbers of non-political bloggers. For the Fall 2012 Blog Fest Gort has expressed a desire to turn the focus back on politics, which seems reasonable given that this is a major election year. Nevertheless, all bloggers - political and non-political alike - are welcome to Blog Fest, which will be held at Rooney's at 67 South Main Street in Pittston on Friday, September 21 starting at 6:00. And any politician with half a lick of sense will know that politics is about getting your message out to everybody - which means they should be just as eager to talk to people who blog about fashion and photography as to those who blog about politics!

On Saturday, September 29, Luzerne County Community College will be playing host to the first-ever NEPA BlogCon! Michelle Hryvnak Davies is part of the "Fearsome Foursome" organizing this event. You can read more about it here. TODAY ONLY, Wednesday, September 19, you can get a ticket to this event for only $35 - a savings of over 46% form the regular price of $65!

Sometimes blogging can feel like an isolated activity. These events are your opportunity to meet and mingle with other bloggers from throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania!

Energy in NEPA: Past, present, and future

On July 3, 1778, a militia made up mostly of men in their 40's and teenage boys, with a few experienced soldiers sprinkled in, took up arms to defend the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania (at the time known as the Wyoming Valley in Connecticut, for reasons which are as bizarre and confusing today as they were way back then) from encroaching Tory Rangers and their Iroquois allies. The militia's actions were guided more by bravery than by good sense, and what at first was a comedy of errors and a textbook example of  how not to conduct a military campaign soon turned into a rout, and then a massacre. Many of those who survived the initial battle did not survive the immediate aftermath, as men and boys were murdered at close range even as they were promised safety, and captured prisoners had their heads smashed in in an act of brutality that sickened the people of England when word reached them of what had come to be known as the Wyoming Massacre.

Today a friend and I walked the route of the Battle of Wyoming, from the initial point where the men and boys lined up to confront the skirmishers who would draw them into a trap, to the point where the broken line of inexperienced soldiers took a stand against the more highly skilled Rangers and their native allies, to the point where the Iroquois attacked the line's left flank from their position of concealment as it wheeled about inexpertly to face them, to the places where the fleeing members of the militia sought safety and escape - and, more often, found death.

This post isn't about that.

As we processed from the initial lining-up point in Wyoming (which is not where the Battle of Wyoming was fought - it was fought in Exeter; "Wyoming" is a more recent construct, named in honor of those who died in the battle,) our guide directed our attention to a utility cut that showed some of the terrain as it was 234 years ago, before fill was added to the river flats beyond the precipitous drop to the south to allow construction of houses even closer to the Susquehanna. And that was where a striking vista displayed itself.

 

It's a little hard to tell from this first photo, but this image encompasses much of this region's past, present, and future. First, the river flat, showing what  the terrain might have looked like in centuries past. While I always think of Pennsylvania - my part of it, anyway - as being "Penn's Woods" and much like the densely forested area seen beyond the transmission tower, reports from the time of the Battle of Wyoming describe the area as sparsely wooded with white and yellow pine and some oak "shrubs." Much of the land would have been cleared for agriculture, and there was very little in the way of underbrush.

The trees beyond the tower in the distance - some 850 or so feet from where I took this picture -  mark the shore of the Susquehanna, which was the goal of the fleeing survivors of the Battle of Wyoming, who hoped to make it downriver to the relative safety of Fort Wilkes-Barre and Forty Fort. (No one thought to have boats tied up on the riverbanks for use if needed.) Beyond those trees, the black hills are actually culm banks well beyond the opposite riverbank, nearly a mile from where I was standing. "Culm" is the rock waste product from anthracite mining, a mixture of slate and low-grade coal that cannot be refined further in an economical manner. So instead it is piled up in great hills that once covered much of the landscape of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The culm is separated from the coal in buildings called "coal breakers," like the gray boxy building in the middle left.

Beyond the culm bank, more than six miles from where I stood to take this photo, is a line of wind turbines along a ridge. They can be seen here behind and to the sides of the transmission tower.

Throughout the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, coal from the Wyoming Valley supplied power to this nation and its industrial expansion. Anthracite coal burns hot and relatively cleanly, at least when compared to the more common bituminous coal found in West Virginia and elsewhere. Coal mining provided a source of income to many of the people of this area. But it also killed and sickened may of those same workers, through mining accidents and "black lung," the buildup of coal dust in the lungs that resulted in emphysema and, ultimately, death. As revenue from coal mines dwindled, with the Knox Mine Disaster being be final straw, the coal mining companies abandoned their operations and left the area - placing upon the residents of Northeastern Pennsylvania the burden of dealing with the consequences of coal mining: the mine fires, the poisoned creeks and streams contaminated by flowing through old mines, the unpredictable collapses of old mines - where else other than Northeastern Pennsylvania are homeowners required to buy mine subsidence insurance, just in case a gaping hole should open on their property and consume some or all of their house?

The wind turbines are a more recent addition to the landscape. I noticed them suddenly back in 2006, though they may have been constructed months before I spotted them as I was coming home one afternoon. This group is just one of several constructed throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania. They  are not without controversy; some have criticized them for causing bird deaths. Turbine operators are hardly blase about bird-turbine collisions, as such a thing can easily damage a turbine blade. Turbines have "off" switches and are frequently turned off for servicing; it would be no large matter to temporarily shut down the turbines during times when they  might interfere with migrating birds.

Two aspects of Northeastern Pennsylvania's energy picture are not seen here. Some feel that Pennsylvania is not an ideal location for solar energy generation. However, Pennsylvania receives about as much incident solar energy as Germany, the nation  that is a world leader in the generation of electricity from sunlight. By following the German model, Pennsylvania can easily become a successful solar electricity generator. And anyone who still doubts is directed to view the (literally) green solar energy collection and conversion systems throughout this image. Yes, that's right - trees.

One other piece of the energy picture remains. (Two, if you count nuclear, which I don't; we have a local nuclear power plant in Salem Township near Berwick, it's past its rated lifetime, it's under consideration for expansion, and it supplies its energy to New York and New Jersey.) That is the extraction of natural gas entombed in layers of shale using a process known as hydro-fracturing, or "fracking." It is neither a safe nor a carefully-executed process, according to an article in no less a publication than the Wall Street Journal. It has resulted in numerous documented cases of drinking-well contamination. The uncontrolled release of methane - a clean-burning fossil fuel that happens to be an extremely powerful greenhouse gas when released directly into the atmosphere - has been detected. Migrating (and sometimes spilled or even dumped) fracking chemicals have resulted in ground and water contamination, even road damage. Fracking consumes many millions of gallons of water, locking it underground in deep shale prisons and effectively removing it from the hydrosphere forever.And accidents caused by reckless "roughnecks" imported into the area from other states have resulted in at least one death.  Meanwhile, residents dealing every day with the consequences of coal mining in the area are not entirely convinced that gas-drilling companies can be trusted when they state that they will clean up after themselves.

Two hundred and thirty-four years ago some brave and foolish men and boys took upon themselves the task of defending their homes, their farms, what they thought of as their homeland, from invading marauders bent on its destruction. Today, many of us feel the same when it comes to energy development. We have options available to us that will increase our energy independence and decrease our need for fossil fuels. We also have an option available that will slip the yoke of fossil-fuel dependence upon our necks while at the same time resulting in immediate and long-term environmental consequences.  Which one will we choose?

Another blog: Northeastern Pennsylvania Writers' Collective

I've started still yet another new blog. This one is for my writing group, the Northeastern Pennsylvania Writers' Collective, also known as the NEPWC :

The Northeastern Pennsylvania Writers' Collective
http://nepwc.blogspot.com/

A writer friend told me that the problem with some of the writing groups she's participated in is that they're too polite. Politeness doesn't help you grow as a writer. Our group is raucous and rude, sometimes to the point of scaring off prospective members. There are also more than a few ego conflicts at play, and a few other...issues. But there's a broad range of talents, perspectives, personal histories, and experience levels that come together in the group, and it's a valuable workshop for developing both stories and writing skills, and for being exposed to the works of others.

I'm using the blog in a lot of ways. We have a Facebook group, but as I've discussed before, the "closed cocktail party" nature of Facebook means that only Facebook users - specifically, Facebook users who are admitted into the group - can see the Facebook site. (As far as I know.) Any announcements or bits of information that get posted to the Facebook group, I'm reposting to the blog - and vice-versa. I'm also posting our weekly writing prompts. Plus I've got a bunch of other writing blogs linked on the sidebar, and I'm flagging any posts from there of special value. The blog will both serve as a sort of within-group announcements page for those members who do not have Facebook (there are several.) It will also serve as the public face of our group, until and unless we come up with another format for that. As an open writing group, this is the best way for potential members to find out about us.

I'm hoping to network this blog with the blogs or websites of other groups that operate out of or are tied to The Vintage (formerly the Vintage Theater), now at 326 Spruce Street in Scranton. And of course, the blog is listed on NEPA Blogs.

If you're looking for a writing group in Northeastern Pennsylvania, or are just interested in writing groups in general, be sure to check out the Northeastern Pennsylvania Writers' Collective blog!

Other churches, other windows: Holy Trinity from another angle

After my weekly meeting with my writing group, one of the other members stopped me and told me she had just been discussing my Stained Glass Project with someone else the previous night. I haven't really updated this project in several years. I did a presentation about it earlier this year, and I've done a few posts referencing the project, but I'm still three or four windows away from completing the project.

A few hours later I found myself in church with a camera in my pocket. It wasn't my "home" church, formerly St. Mary's, now the Alternate Worship Site for the Parish of St. Faustina. No, this was at the former Holy Trinity, now the Primary Worship Site for the Parish of St. Faustina. I've taken pictures there before, but from another angle, and since I had some time to kill, I decided to snap a few photos before mass began.

My first shot was just a standard image taken without a flash, balancing the camera on the back of the pew in front of me for stability.

Immediately I saw that any photos like this would be over-exposed. So I had to take another approach, and snap away in Sports mode. The faster shutter speed would reduce detail, but would reduce the amount of light pouring onto the CCD - and also make it possible to take the photos freehand.

Here's another view of the same window, which was determined by an anonymous commenter on a previous post to be a depiction of St. Vincent de Paul.

I continued to take pictures right up until things were ready to begin.

A window depicting St. Stanislaus Kostka. Compare to this wimdow from St. Mary's.

A window depicting...I have no idea. Whatever it is has dead, dead eyes.

OH NO DON'T BLINK WHATEVER YOU DO

Here's an image of St. Peter seen in context. I've previously displayed a close-up photo of this window. Holy Trinity was originally intended to become a cathedral, can you tell? It's always been an overwhelmingly ornate and magnificent place, a stark contrast to the relative simplicity of the now-closed St. Stanislaus, which was the first Catholic church in Nanticoke. Trinity was the second, formed by parish members who left St. Stanislaus in a dispute. The entire church seems to be a statement about grandeur and opulence. Recent renovations have toned down this effect somewhat, in part by adopting a dimmer paint scheme.

Two views of the window immediately to my right, looking up.

I don't really have an emotional connection with this church. It wasn't a major part of my childhood, not like St. Mary's and St. Stan's, and I don't have many special memories from it. But other people do. Almost everybody has a camera these days. There is nothing to prevent someone for whom these windows have some special meaning from taking a camera - possibly a better camera than my 4 megapixel Nikon Coolpix L4 - and snapping photos of their own. This goes for every church, everywhere, and every other public and private space worth preserving.

What has meaning to you? What has special memories? Do you own a camera? If so, why aren't you capturing it now, before it passes into history?

Coyotes and turkey vultures

I grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania in the 1970's and 1980's, but it wasn't until the late 80's or early 90's that I recall ever seeing a turkey vulture or hearing about coyotes in this area. Nowadays turkey vultures are in the sky every day, and coyotes are common too. It's not like I wasn't paying attention - I have a vivid memory of a Sunday in 1979 1978 when hundreds of seagulls descended on Nanticoke (PARADE magazine featured a cover story on Star Trek: The Motion Picture that day.) So is it my imagination, or are these animals more common in NEPA than they once were?

In a highly peripatetic society, it's increasingly difficult to find many people who have been in any one place long enough to have observed the gradual (and sometimes sudden) changes that the decades have brought. What about you? Have you noticed specific environmental changes where you live?  Leave a comment describing what you've noticed!

Nearly died again

For most of twenty years I had a heck of a commute. From 1992 through early 2012 (with interruptions in 2007, 2010, and large parts of 2011) I drove 33-35 miles each way to and from work, mostly on Interstate 81. It wasn't the worst commute in the world, or the longest; but it was long enough and dangerous enough that it seemed to me that I had a good chance of eventually dying during that trip.

I now have a five mile commute to work, mostly along sparsely-traveled back roads. Dying in traffic is less of a concern.

This weekend I nearly died on my way to my writing group.

OK, my writing group meets in Scranton, and the commute takes me on I-81, so the same issues I had with getting to work apply. But this wasn't even there. This was on the Sans Souci Parkway, a surprisingly deadly four-lane road that connects Nanticoke to Wilkes-Barre. I was making a pit stop there for gas before getting on the highway, at a gas station less than two miles from my house.  To get to the gas station from Nanticoke, you have two options: drive past the gas station to one of the cross-roads or to the Hanover Mall or some other convenient spot, turn around, and make a right-hand turn into the station; or get into the left lane just past the road dividers, wait for oncoming traffic to clear, and make an almost-but-not-quite U-turn into the gas station. Midday on a Saturday, I decided to go for this second option.

And nearly died.

Oncoming traffic was surprisingly heavy for a midday on a Saturday. By "surprisingly heavy" I mean cars and trucks were headed into Nanticoke in ones or twos, but never with enough of a gap between them and the vehicles behind them to make the turn safely. I sat and waited in the left lane, one foot on the brake, turn signal blinking away.

Then I heard the horn.

It sounded far away, but I knew it wasn't. I looked in my rear-view just in time to see a car swerving around me at the last moment. The driver, who I saw out of my right window as he peeled around me well in excess of the posted 45 mph speed limit, was silver-haired and wearing wrap-around sunglasses. I'm not a gambling man, but I'd bet you a dollar he was holding a cell phone up to his right ear, which I couldn't see.

If he had hit me I probably wouldn't have been killed outright, not like the elderly couple who were killed a year and a week ago when a truck made a left turn across their path of travel about two miles down the road.  No, I would have been rear-ended at high speed, maybe clipped on my right rear side, which would have left me rattled but alive - and probably would have pushed me into the path of oncoming traffic. Which might have then hit me head-on on the passenger's side, again possibly not killing me outright - unless I was hit hard enough, especially hard enough to be knocked into the pumps at the gas station I was trying to get to.

Then I would have died.

It didn't happen. The car driven at an excessive rate of speed by a silver-haired guy with wrap-around sunglasses swerved around me at the last possible moment. I'm sure he learned his lesson and will never speed again. And I'm sure all who witnessed this near-tragedy with remember it, and drive more safely all the days of their lives.

Yeah, right.

Sans Souci is French for "without care,"* and that is the attitude of many of the drivers who speed along it, oblivious to speed limits and the presence of other drivers on the road. It's just a matter of time before the next tragic and wholly avoidable deadly accident. After all those years commuting on the highway, it would be ironic if I met my end on a parkway two miles from my house.


*According to Lou Grant in an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, it's French for "without Souci." Lou Grant and his wife went on their honeymoon there - maybe to the old Sans Souci amusement park?

Aliens in the attic

I presented a story to my writing group last week. It was well-received, better than I expected, and I was given lots of constructive feedback, including suggestions to tighten it, expand it, and rewrite it in at least two completely different styles. I might just act upon every suggestion.

The plot of the story was completely preposterous, which is understandable, since it was dictated entirely by a dream I had a while back. To summarize: in a slightly-worse version of our own world, in a time when the economy has completely collapsed, strange things start appearing in the attics of vacant homes. While seldom seen, the unofficial consensus is that they are some sort of alien life form. Their presence is treated with little more regard than if  you were to find out that the vacant house next door was occupied by pigeons or feral cats or a colony of bats. No one is particularly worried, mainly because most people are focused on everything else - the economy, rampant unemployment, getting food, and all the other day-to-day concerns that face us in the real world. So while everyone is busy ignoring what should be a terrifying or at least curiosity-inspiring situation, further developments come into play that may lead to the total breakdown of human society - and maybe the end of humanity itself.

The dream left me with such a feeling of dread, doom, and despair that I really didn't know what to do with it, how to get over it. After a while I thought about the levels of detail involved in the dream, and I realized that this was basically a self-contained story that just needed to be written out.

It wasn't until a few weeks later that I started to realize the allegorical nature of this dream, and the metaphors hidden in it. Aspects of the dream captured many of my deepest fears: the fear that someone might break into and squat in my house; the fear of all the vacant houses in town, and who and what might be living in them; fear that the economy might worsen, that unemployment might increase, that things might go from worse to worst. My mother died in the dream, too, and I wasn't able to do anything to prevent that from happening - so there are those fears as well.

The environment played a role in this dream. There was a sense of oppressive heat - much like what we've been experiencing for real this summer. It's hard to shake that aspect of the dream.

There was a pervasive sense of apathy. No one was especially worried about the sudden appearance of aliens. No one cared enough about what was going on to actually do anything about it. Everyone was focused on other issues, things they believed were more important.  In the end it turned out everyone was wrong, but by then it was absolutely too late to do anything about it. Anything at all.

So what would you do if you found out there were aliens living in the attic of the vacant house across the street? Do you think you would be totally blasé about the issue, ignoring it because it didn't directly affect you?

Because we're doing that very sort of thing.

It's not aliens. They're not living in an attic. But there are slow, preventable, reversible disasters going on that we are collectively choosing to ignore.

You know what they are. You've heard about them, over and over. The gradual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is already well above levels that will eventually lead to a disaster is just one example. But there's another one that's very important, and hits close to home - but will eventually affect everyone.

 Methane is an excellent fuel source. It burns hot, burns clean, and results in lower carbon dioxide emissions when burned than other fossil fuels - contributing less to greenhouse emissions than coal or oil.

But methane itself is a powerful greenhouse gas. Released unburned into the atmosphere, it is, according to the EPA, twenty times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat. If you want to accelerate the greenhouse effect, it's not a bad strategy to pump methane into the atmosphere.

The Marcellus Shale formation (or "play," in industry parlance) is located in a region that underlies much of Pennsylvania (except the southeast and central regions, containing the major population center of Philadelphia and the capitol, Harrisburg), Upstate New York, Ohio, Maryland, and portions of several other states. Vast stores of methane may be trapped within this formation, and vast amounts of the gas are being liberated and captured using hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking") techniques - particularly new methods that have opened up previously inaccessible deposits.

Sounds great, doesn't it?

The problem is: these new fracking techniques were developed in a totally different region, geologically speaking, than the place where the're being used. Oklahoma, Texas, the Gulf Coast - the rock strata of these regions is completely different from what it is in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

This produces some interesting results.  Fracking drills deep belowground, pumping a witch's brew of chemicals - drilling "mud," mineral oil (to dissolve rocks), water under extremely high pressure - to shatter the rock and liberate the methane in a manner that allows it be recoverable. In theory, anyway.  In practice, Pennsylvania's complex geology - coupled with defective and inadequately-designed wells - has resulted in the uncontrolled liberation of vast quantities of methane.  The Susquehanna has been bubbling with methane for well over a year. More recent incidents have resulted in methane bubbles forming in other creeks and streams. And those are just the places where we can easily see the gas escaping. It takes more sophisticated detecting equipment to spot the plumes  of methane rising up out of the ground.

And it's not just methane that's the problem. Fracking is supposed to avoid contaminating water tables  and ground and surface water. But as the saying goes, where there are trains, there will be train wrecks. And there have been train wrecks, as the fracking technique, coupled with the chemicals used, has produced surprising results - including a large area near a drill site that appears to have undergone liquefaction, a condition that turns solid earth into a supersaturated state that can act like a liquid at the slightest provocation, and then return to a solid state, trapping anything that has sunk into it. (Think quicksand for the 21st century.) And of course there has been the wellwater contamination, and the accidents (and intentional acts) involving trucks and truckers employed by the Marcellus Shale industry, including an incident of intentionally dumping of chemical waste on state game lands, and another that involved a water tanker tipping over onto a nearby vehicle, killing the driver and badly injuring his daughter, who saw her father die in front of her.

"We all know that more drilling is good," quipped a CNN anchor the other day, talking about how a glut of natural gas on the market has resulted in lower prices and less incentive to drill. Indeed they do: every commercial break on CNN features two or more commercials paid for by the fossil fuels industry. Count on CNN - and other media outlets that take money from the fossil fuels industry - to continue to provide the biased coverage they've been paid to provide. Don't expect to hear much at all about the problems - past, future, and ongoing.

But we know there's a problem. Folks like Don Williams at the Susquehanna River Sentinel have been going on about this issue for years. If you aren't educated on this issue, it's not for lack of available information. It's really just much easier to ignore it, especially if you don't live in Marcellus Shale territory, and just go on along with your lives.

In my dream the problem became obvious when a mysterious pink slime begins to emerge from alien-occupied houses, a slime that forms a thin film everywhere. Soon the nature of this slime becomes apparent as steel rusts, aluminum pits, paint peels, tires flatten, engines leak, and roads crumble. In a short time period the aliens go from being an ignorable curiosity to being the harbingers of the unmaking of human society and all its works. By the time people realize there's a crisis it's far too late to do anything about it.

We've got a crisis. We've got a disaster going on right now. But people would rather think about other things, and disregard this crisis. It doesn't affect them, not immediately, and they've got lots of other things on their minds. Yet the impact of the disaster may affect - well, everyone, everywhere. Will enough people take note to actually get anything accomplished? Or will we collectively ignore this ongoing disaster until it's far too late to do anything about it at all?

There are aliens in the attic of the vacant house across the street. What are you going to do about it?

The Vintage Theater's IndieGoGo fundraiser!

Scranton's Vintage Theater, which has hosted numerous events relevant to the NEPA blogging community in the past year, is starting an IndieGoGo fundraiser that runs now through August 18! Go here for more details on the fundraiser, and here for more information about the Vintage Theater!

Why do you blog?

UPDATE, 7/20/12: Leslie Stewart of Darling Stewie and part of the "Fearsome Foursome" who are running September's NEPA BlogCon pointed out that they asked this same question on the NEPA BlogCon blog a few weeks ago. I'll post a link to this post there so everybody can have access to all the answers that are given on both sites!

This is a question for any bloggers reading this: Why do you blog?

I could speculate on reasons why other people blog, talk about the narrow-minded and provincial attitudes of some who assume that everyone blogs for the same reasons that they do, and therefore must follow the same rules that they do (or that they have declared others must follow.) But I really want to know, honestly, why other people blog. I'll give my reasons, and I'd like everyone else to put their reasons in the comments to this blog post. (That will save me the bother of gathering them from assorted other locations and reposting them here.) Also please be sure to leave a link to your blog!

Here are my answers, for all of my blogs. All of them so far, anyway.

Another Monkey: Started May 2004. When I talk about "my blog," this is the one I'm talking about. I've talked about why I started this blog so many times in the past I don't even feel like going over it again. But I will. It's a soapbox, a creative outlet, a place to vent, a way of communicating with friends and strangers that predates the mass popularity of Facebook. It's a place to post photos and stories. It's an autobiography in a million parts. Most importantly - to me, anyway - it's a place to store my memories outside of my own head. Because I've watched too many people go to those places where they no longer have access to their own memories. And then it's too late to try to retrieve them So this way, somehow, this stuff will be out there. This is the blog I care about the most, and most associate myself with.

Til August: Started April 2005. My second blog - I didn't realize that until just now. A few years after the band 3 Brix Shy broke up, some of its members talked about getting together to form a new band. The catch: in August of that year, one of the members would be moving away. So the plan was to create a band that would play through that Spring and Summer and break up in August. The blog would follow their adventures and publicize their shows. Unfortunately, the band never got past the planning stages.

Angry Political Blog: Started April 2005. I didn't want to crap up Another Monkey with lots of political seething, but I really needed a place to vent in the aftermath of the disastrous 2004 election. So I created a blog that would just be about politics and anger. And I realized that what Johnny Lydon said is true: anger is an energy. I wrote one post and found myself getting sucked into a self-perpetuating cycle of rage. I never wrote another post there.

NEPA Blogs: Started January 2006. Next to Another Monkey, this is the Big One. I started it as a sort of get-hits-quick scheme: I had a vision of a network of local bloggers, all linking to each other through a central site, with everyone's Google rank going up through the one-to-many / many-to-one relationship. It never happened, mainly because I never really let people in on the plan when I added them. Many of the bloggers added in those early days still might not know that they've been added, unless they're checking their traffic sources. But things really took off when I brought on Gort and Michelle Hryvnak Davies as co-administrators. I knew Gort had connections to the top political blogs in the region, while Michelle was tied into the region itself, and a technology and social media expert.

I almost gave up on NEPA Blogs a while ago. I've told that story before, too. Finding blogs was hard, they had a tendency to spontaneously shut down, and there was really no return on the effort it took to keep the blog going. Michelle changed all that. She revived it, breathed new life into it, got us on Facebook and Twitter and television and radio and in newspapers and magazines. Because of her efforts, NEPA Blogs is still going stronger than ever.

I have a new outlook on this blog. I now see myself as trying to encourage, popularize, and promote blogging in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Many bloggers think they're blogging in a vacuum, that nobody gives a damn what they have to say. I'm trying to show bloggers that they're not alone, that they're part of a bigger community - and not just the virtual, global community of the Blogosphere, but a local community, too, of people they might want to meet and get to know, might actually already know.

That's why I do stuff with NEPA Blogs. I won't presume that I know why Gort or Michelle stick with it - and frankly, I've never asked them. Until now. I'd love to know the reasons why they blog, and why they stay with running NEPA Blogs.

A Blog of Nanticoke: Started July 2007.
Unknown Failure: Started July 2007.
A Monkey in the Garden: Started July 2007
The Magic of Everyday Life: Started...I don't know, around this same time.

These were four "spin-off" blogs. (I thought there was a fifth, "A Monkey Looks at the Stars," but that might never have gotten past the planning stages.) Each would repost items that had originally appeared on Another Monkey, stories respectively about my hometown of Nanticoke, computers, gardening, ...ummm, stuff, and astronomy. The idea was this: with my broad range of content on Another Monkey, the Google Ads that I added in 2007 were becoming hopelessly muddled and unfocused. By creating spinoff blogs that focused on specific topics, I would get a more focused selection of ads targeted specifically at people interested in those topics.

The Magic of Everyday Life was to have been an exception. I always thought that someday I might open a little shop on Main Street in Nanticoke, a junk store of sorts that also sold books, music, gardening supplies, scientific toys, magic tricks, gag items... It hasn't happened, not yet. But this blog was supposed to be a catch-all for reposting posts that might relate to all this stuff. I grabbed it to secure the name. I've never added any posts.

Of all of these, A Blog of Nanticoke is the only one I've really maintained to any extent. Now I'm more likely to write original posts here and link to them on Another Monkey.

I've recently learned that Blogger takes a dim view of blogs that just repost content from other sites, even sites by the same author. To an extent this is understandable, a sort of anti-scraping policy designed to protect creators of original content from having their content scraped and reposted. For my purposes, though, the policy sort-of sucks.

The Virtual Refrigerator: Started September 2008. My nephews, like so many kids, loved to draw, and their visits to their grandmother often resulted in little masterpieces left around the house, to become folded and dog-eared and faded and maybe even destroyed. I decided to try to capture and preserve some of these images by scanning them into a blog. It was a fun project, and I still think it's a good idea, but it was very labor-intensive and time-consuming.

Hot Notes: Started August 2010. A blog created by request. This was going to be an online newsletter for the recently-displaced employees from my company, including me. Unfortunately the group that was supposed to feed me information for this fell apart shortly after I started it, and I ran out of things to post.

NEPA Solar: Started May 2011. An attempt at establishing a perception of subject matter expertise. I had worked in the solar industry in Delaware from March 1990 through August 1991. After I lost my job in the DVD industry - for the second time - I decided to take a stab at breaking into the solar power industry in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Being the region's foremost blogger on solar energy would be a shiny item on a résumé targeted at getting a a job in the industry. This is still a work in progress.

Personal branding blog: Started September 2011. Résumés are just brief summaries of who you are and what you've done. With this blog I wanted to flesh out each line item on my résumé to use as a "for more information..." reference. I don't know if this did any good in my job search.

Blogging 101A: Intro to Blogging (restricted access): Started June 2012. Other people with far fewer years of blogging experience than me have declared themselves "blogging experts." Years ago I thought through a syllabus for a community college introductory course in blogging. An opportunity is coming where I may be asked to present just such a course in a two- to three-hour format. This blog would be the course outline, the materials, and the reference links. To preserve the "exclusivity" of this course - it would be offered as a premium in exchange for donations to a specific cause - I've made the blog restricted. I'll open it up to a small group of people I know once I've fleshed it out a bit, to get feedback from real blogging "experts" whose opinions I respect.

Northeastern Pennsylvania Writers' Collective: Started June 2012. Connected to the same events as the previous blog. This would be a blog for the writers' group I participate in. We have a Facebook page, with all the usual problems with a Facebook page, including the inability of anyone to access it who isn't 1.on Facebook and 2.a part of the group. I created this to be an open blog, directed at our group but readable by anyone who finds it. It may also work in conjunction with something else that's coming down the pike.

So, that's that.  Fourteen blogs, many different answers to the question "Why do you blog?" So how about you? If you are a blogger, why do you blog?

A response to Jeff Bullas on The 10 Secret Benefits of Blogging

This is a comment I wrote in response to Jeff Bullas's post, What are the 10 Secret Benefits of Blogging? (http://www.jeffbullas.com/2012/07/06/what-are-the-10-secret-benefits-of-blogging/)

Jeff, you're helping to promulgate two of the most popular prejudices of blogsnobbery.


One is that to be a "serious" blogger you have to own your own domain. That's nonsense. There is no "pay to play" requirement for blogging. It's like saying you're not a serious writer unless you're jotting down your thoughts in a Moleskine notebook. The true test of whether a blogger is "serious" or not is in the blogging. That's it. Anything else is bigotry and prejudice. Blogsnobbery.


The other tenet is, of course, that the Blogger/Blogspot platform is unworthy of being mentioned. That's been going on since at least Chris Pirillo's famous 2005 tantrum "Kill Blogspot Already!" It's also nonsense, as much now as it was then. Blogger/Blogspot is the easiest jumping-on point for new bloggers, and an excellent way to develop and customize blogs without a great deal of technical expertise. Perhaps this is the reason why there is so much contempt for this platform: it lets the unwashed masses (like me) into the party.


You do not mention one of the biggest benefits of blogging: community building. It's not just a matter of finding a "tribe." Once you establish a voice for yourself, you may locate other like-minded (or differently-minded) bloggers with whom you may find yourself exchanging comments, trading links, or exploring each other's blogrolls. Starting a blog can open up whole worlds that you never knew existed.


I've spent the past six-and-a-half years promoting and popularizing blogs and blogging throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania. I find the notion that you must own your own domain name to be considered a "serious" blogger, and the snobbish contempt for one of the most popular and accessible blogging platforms available, to be antithetical to my efforts to encourage people to explore established blogs, create blogs of their own, and build and strengthen the local community of bloggers.

http://nepablogs.blogspot.com/
http://anothermonkey.blogspot.com/

The trouble with night shift

We live in a world built around day shift. Much of the work world lives a 9-to-5 existence and thinks that's normal, ignoring the fact that many essential services that people use face-to-face, like banks and post offices*, are also only open 9-to-5, making it difficult or impossible for those working day shift to do business with them.

That's one of the advantages of working night shift. But night shift comes with disadvantages, too.

I hesitate to call what I've been working for the last few weeks "night shift." When I was working 6PM to 6AM, on my feet and running for twelve hours with a 40-60 minute commute on either side, that was night shift. Working 3:45PM - 12:15AM at a desk job five miles from my house is more like a "late afternoon" shift.

But in some ways it's more difficult to integrate this shift into my everyday life. When I was working twelve hour shifts with two additional hours spent on the road, it was pretty much understood that I would be useless for anything else those days. By the time I got home at 7:00 in the morning supermarkets were starting to open, so if I needed to grab some groceries I could.  After I got home I might spend an hour or so online, and I would have time to make an after-work snack and a before-work meal. But other than that I was mostly sleeping, getting ready for work, or taking care of stuff that couldn't wait until my off days.


Most supermarkets around here close at midnight, so now if I want to go shopping I have to do so before work, or on weekends when I'm trying to do everything else. My body starts to shut down pretty quickly after I come home. It's easier to power through 2:00 in the morning by working than it is to stay up at that hour when you're winding down after work. I'm usually in bed by 3:00. It would be like someone working a 9-to-5 shift being in bed by 7:45.


...and then I'm expected to be up by 9:00 in the morning. The world is awake, I'm "off," as far as everyone else is concerned, so why shouldn't I be up and doing things? To use the 9-to-5 analogy again, this would be like being up at 1:45 in the morning - and being expected to take care of everything that needs to be taken care of.


For me, in effect, the period of 9:00 to 3:15 is my morning and my afternoon combined into one. I'm expected to be up and at 'em, doing the things a 9-to-5 worker might do on a day off. And I do. But now other stuff is suffering. The stuff a person working a daytime shift might get to do after work is looked upon with disdain. I'm barely blogging anymore, and I haven't written anything for my writing group for weeks. 


This is a shift I chose. I knew what I was getting into, but other things have happened since I chose this shift, things that are putting other time pressures on my daylight hours.  And this is not the worst shift I know of, not by a long shot. I know someone working a shift that starts somewhere in the early morning hours and ends close to mid-day. And the expectations on that person are even greater.

So, give a thought to the night shift worker. Respect their sleep time, and recognize that the fact that they're not working during the day doesn't mean that they're "off."



*I can hear the moaning now: "Who uses banks and post offices anymore? Just old stupid people with AOL email addresses who use phone books to look up phone numbers! Why should we care about them?"

You need a blog: Why Facebook and Twitter are not enough

How are your friends doing? Your Facebook friends, I mean. Have you seen their updates lately? Are you sure? Are you sure you're not just seeing "Top Stories," despite having specified that you want to see all of your friends' updates, over and over again?

How about those groups and organizations you're a fan of? Are you seeing all of the updates?

The answer, in both cases, is probably not. Facebook routinely tinkers with what you see - or what the people you're trying to communicate with get to see.

I've said it over and over again: Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg's playground, he's just letting us play there. And the rules of that playground keep changing. Ask anyone who's been put in "Facebook Jail" for attempting to "Friend" someone who's been recommended to them by Facebook itself. Plus, Facebook reserves the right to censor what you've posted, and then punish you for posting things that Facebook finds offensive. Or objectionable. Or violate today's rules.

I've also said over and over again that Facebook is no substitute for having  a blog to promote your group, organization, band, or whatever. Neither is Twitter. Twitter is like being in a crowded party where everyone is shouting out little snippets of conversation, all given equal importance. You want to say something important, something you really want all your friends to hear? Too bad, it just got buried by three dozen people posting tweets about their lunch, their pets, their commute, and how much they love lamp. Buried, and never to be seen again, because in the next few hours there will be hundreds of additional tweets piled on top of that.

Blogs may seem quaint and old-fashioned to those neophiles who are constantly chasing the banner, for whom what worked yesterday is considered junk because it's...well, just so yesterday. But for those who actually give a damn about things that work, blogs and blogging are immensely valuable tools for getting your message across in a manner that has a high degree of persistence, even permanence.

Consider this: If you are an organization that wants to keep people up-to-date with the latest news, you could opt for the Facebook route, setting up a fan page and attracting subscribers.  If you're lucky, some of your fans will see each post (estimates vary from 16% to 25%, based on your "Edgerank"), though it will almost certainly be lost among posts from their other "friends." (They might have a chance to see it later, if they make the effort to surf over.) Of course, this visibility is only to your "fans," and only to those fans who are on Facebook. (Astonishingly, not everyone in the world is on Facebook.) You can also use Twitter and Tweet your news, but again, this will only go out to your "followers," and will quickly be lost amidst the noise that is 99.999...% of the stuff posted on Twitter.

So how do you make sure your message gets out?

The answer is simple: you need a blog. Not just a website, but an honest-to-goodness blog, with frequent updates, an RSS feed, and an easy setup for people to follow or get posts by email. This takes a little more effort, but the payoff can be much greater. What you post on your blog today will still be there tomorrow, and won't get buried by what other people post on their blogs. Your posts will be visible to the world, not just "fans" or "followers," and not just to members of a site like Facebook or Twitter. They will get indexed by search engines and show up in people's searches. And you can post links to your blog posts on Facebook and Twitter, and have your Twitter updates displayed on your blog!  So it's not an either/or situation. Having a blog is essential to having an online presence, and using it in conjunction with other social media is key to maximizing your visibility. On top of that, it doesn't have to cost you a dime. You can get a blog for free and completely manage it yourself, or you can pay to have the "prestige" of a top-level domain name or even hire someone to design and manage your blog for you.

It's up to you. Facebook is nice. Twitter is nice. But if you're serious about getting your message out, they're not enough. You need a blog to create a real web presence, a place where you can say what you need to say and your friends and fans can always come to hear it.

The Vintage Theater: AWESOMENESS IS COMING

It's a little to early to let the car out of the bag, but let me just say that there are some fundraising events that are coming up on behalf of the new and improved Vintage Theater in Scranton that are just amazing beyond words.  If you live anywhere near Northeastern Pennsylvania, YOU WILL WANT TO BE A PART OF THIS!!!

Details coming July 1!

40 years after the flood

Until last September, if you spoke to anyone in Northeastern Pennsylvania about "the flood" they would know exactly what you meant. Some old-timers might remember the St. Patrick's Day Flood of 1936, but for everyone else "the flood" meant one thing.

Agnes.

Floods don't get names, not like that. Agnes was a Tropical Storm that, in June 1972, blew along the Eastern Seaboard up from the Gulf of Mexico on a meandering, lazy course that took it over land, over the Atlantic, and then back over land - through New York City and then up into upstate New York. Northeastern Pennsylvania got smacked with the outer bands (just like with Irene in 2011, which also hit New York City but then set its sights on New England), but the real damage was done when the remnant of Agnes parked itself over the headwaters of the Susquehanna (just like Lee a week after Irene last year - though Lee also dumped rain on Northeastern Pennsylvania for days, as did Agnes.)

The Susquehanna rose and rose, threatening to overtop the levees that had built in the wake of the flood of '36. A heroic effort was made to augment the dikes with sandbags. Mandatory evacuations were ordered for the flood zone. Many complied. Some refused to leave.

And then, in a horrific moment, the sandbags gave way. The river came through. Photos captured the terror of people who had moments before been fighting to hold back the river with sandbags now running for their lives.

Very few people died in the flood itself, and mostly from heart attacks and things like that. Those who refused to evacuate had to be rescued by boat, sometimes from upper stories, sometimes from rooftops.

I had  a relative who lived in the flood zone - my father's mother's sister's mother-in-law. She didn't think the river would break through the levees. She didn't think she would be affected. She was wrong. She had to be evacuated from a third story window.

I was just four when Agnes hit. Now it would be considered crazy to take a four-year-old into a flood zone, even a month or more after the waters had receded. But things were different back then. And the visit to this relative's house left a memory that has stayed with me forever.

Even at that age I loved books. Comic books, paperbacks, hardbacks, books of all sorts. What I saw broke my heart.

We were in a large empty room. Cleanup had obviously been going on for some time at that point. But some things just couldn't be cleaned. Like the stains on the ceiling.

The room I was in had probably been their living room. Maybe their library, even. It was where their books had been. And when the floodwaters came through, those books were knocked off their shelves, caught up in the water, and floated up to the ceiling.

The water didn't stop at the first floor. It chased my relatives up to their third floor. So the first floor was filled completely. The books rose to the top and were pressed against the ceiling, at least until they absorbed enough water to sink. In the meantime, they had left an impression.

The ceiling of that room was tattooed with the colors of the covers of hundreds of books that had been pressed against it.

It was a strange and beautiful sight, and horrifying at the same time. I knew that all those books that someone had once read and loved enough to buy were now garbage heaped in piles along the streets. Just like everything else that these people had ever owned.

Thirty-nine years later it happened again. Not in Wilkes-Barre or in Kingston, where my relatives had lived. They were protected by a levee-raising project that was completed in response to Agnes. This time it was in West Pittston and Shickshnny and other places. People lost everything because of the power of a flood.

I wonder if in thirty-nine years people will remember Lee the way we remember Agnes?

Bowie is missing

UPDATE, 6/23/12: Bowie reappeared overnight. She must have been hiding somewhere downstairs. She wasn't making any sounds down there or showing herself at all. I left the basement door open and in the middle of the night she showed up in front of the closed upstairs bathroom where she usually spends the night - without her collar. This morning I found her collar in an obvious spot on the kitchen floor, complete with bell. So either it was sitting there all this while and she was without it, or she was wearing it all this while and pulled it over her head when she came upstairs.

Bowie has gone missing.

We're not sure when. This has been a chaotic week. My sister has been up, my mom was in the hospital, and I'm working a 3:45-to-12:15 shift. I haven't actually kept track of all the cats amid the running around. My sister says she saw Bowie yesterday morning or the night before.

Now, there's a good chance Bowie is hiding in the house. She's good at that sort of thing. But she also has had some opportunities to slip out of the house, not that she's ever shown any inclination to do so. Possibly when my mom was coming back home from the hospital yesterday, or possibly when I was getting some help bringing in groceries - the door to the garage was inadvertently left open, and at least one cat found his way in there, and it's possible that the inner door may have been left open at the same time that the garage door was open. So she may have slipped out then, or may be hiding in the garage, or may be hiding anywhere else.

If anyone reading this is in the Nanticoke area, she might be in the area of Kosciuszko street. She's a female brown tabby with irregular stripes, wearing a purple collar with a bell. If you spot her, contact me at databoy142 at hotmail dot com.

An older picture showing her stripe pattern

Note the unique back pattern

Zine Festival report

After my writing group broke up today a few of us decided to hike a few blocks across town to the Scranton Zine Festival before taking our traditional late lunch. I quickly met co-organizer Brian Fanelli and made my way around to local zinesters Rachel Goetzke of Word Fountain and the semi-anonymous author of Progression and Progression: Part Two (and the companion blog, bareing skine.) I also met Kenny Luck of the blog The Luck Report (which appears to be down as of this writing.)

Afterwards, as I enjoyed copious amounts of sushi and assorted other food at a buffet, I realized that I had forgotten to take any pictures! So I made a quick detour on my way home, got back to the Zine Festival minutes before everyone packed their stuff up, and grabbed a few quick photos.

The Scranton Zine Festival featured other things in addition to zines: used books, handcrafted bookmarks, arts and crafts, handmade buttons. It was really a celebration of artistic and creative expression. While the majority of zinesters in attendance were from out of the area - mainly Philadelphia, but there were a few from other places, including Canada - I was glad to see Northeastern Pennsylvania well-represented. And I walked away with a few zines to read, and at least one new blog to add to NEPA Blogs!

Scranton Zine Festival is this Saturday

The Scranton Zine Festival is this Saturday from noon to 6 PM at the New Visions Studio and Gallery at 201 Vine Street in Scranton, with a poetry reading to follow from 7 PM - 9 PM.

What's a "zine," you might ask? Zines are sort-of first cousins to blogs. They share the same pedigree but have diverged in execution: whereas blogs are creations that exist in cyberspace for the most part (until the blog hits the big time and gets published as a book,) zines are ink-on-paper creations that have a real presence in the physical world (except when the zine creator, or "zinester," decides to create an online component to the zine - sometimes in the form of a blog!)

Zines are at once more permanent and more ephemeral than blogs. Permanent in that they have a real physical presence as an object, rather than as a website that exists only on some server somewhere; ephemeral in that zines are always "limited editions," while a blog can exist in any numbers anywhere that the blog site can be accessed.

I first became aware of zines during my college years in the late 1980's, assuming we don't count the comic books that my brother and I hand-drew in limited editions of one. The only zine whose name I can recall was called "Whose Opin-yun?" and exists to this day as a single reference on the internet. (That will change once I publish this post.) But I forgot all about zines for something like twenty years, until a conversation with blogger, hiker, and zinester Erin Delaney reminded me that such things exist.

The Scranton Zine Festival is an opportunity for zinesters from Northeastern Pennsylvania and beyond to meet, mingle, and share their creative work. Well, not literally "share;" if you're going, take along a supply of small bills to purchase zines you find interesting - and help keep the zinesters in paper, toner, and whatever other materials they need to practice their craft. (For a list of zinesters and others taking part in the Scranton Zine Festival, go here.)

I'll be in the area this Saturday anyway - my writing group meets in Scranton every Saturday, so it's just a quick walk to the New Visions location. I'm planning to take a stack of blog cards with me, both for Another Monkey and NEPA Blogs. Who knows what sort of connections I'll be making!

A gift fit for a Queen

I must have accidentally caught too much coverage of Queen Elizabeth II's diamond jubilee on Sunday. Monday morning I dreamt that I was in a panic because I had forgotten to get the Queen a present. So I grabbed the comforter off of my bed, folded it once lengthwise, then rolled it up neatly and secured it with black bands. Then I used a Sharpie to write "HAPPY 60th, QUEEN!" on it and shipped it to her. I woke up all upset because I had given away my comforter.

Transit of Venus TOMORROW, Tuesday, June 5

Tomorrow a rare alignment of the orbits of Earth and Venus will take place, allowing people who happen to be on the right spot on Earth a chance to see Venus pass across, or transit, the face of the sun.

Unless there are some breakthroughs in longevity in the next few decades, this will be the last Transit of Venus in our lifetime. The next one won't take place for over one hundred and five years. The last one actually took place just eight years ago, and the last one before that was in 1882.

For all the details on when, where, and how you can see this event, go here:

Bad Astronomy: Everything you need to know about next week’s Transit of Venus